Watching tonight's "The National" in HD from Toronto (on BEV channel 802), I noticed that a commercial for Doctor Who, like all the other commercials, was shown in a 4:3 aspect ratio with black bars on the sides. Unfortunately, the Doctor Who ad was originally widescreen (16:9), so it ended up being squished ("tall, skinny people syndrome").

I recorded the Women's World Cup soccer game between Canada and Ghana on CBC HD Toronto from Shaw Ch 209 here in Kelowna last night. The channel lost sound about half way through the game. When I checked about an hour after the game the sound was still missing. I won't be able to check again until later today as my cable box is busy recording a bunch of soccer from various sources now.

Fortunately I had the game recorded from the local SD CBC channel as well so I could capture it to DVD and so was able to watch that version.

Shaw had problems with their CBC HD Toronto feed a couple of days ago when the picture was freezing for significant periods of time although the sound was usually okay. I called Shaw and complained because I was concerned that it was a problem with my feed but they told me it was at least a BC wide Shaw problem. It was resolved later that day but I am very disappointed with the problem this morning.

Last Saturday I really got annoyed when the movie "The Mexican" (in WS), was shown without beginning.
I was getting ready to record it too, tuned into CBC-HD at 22.00 h, but instead of the scheduled movie, there was american football on. Waiting, I tuned on cable (analogue CBC) and there, there was movie shown from the start.
This is, by the way, the first time that I see CBC not simulcasting programming on cbc-tv and cbc-hd.
Once the american football game was finished (at about 22.30 h PT), CBUT-DT said "now joining regular programming" and then it was commercials - but zoomed in, and after it, the first segment of the movie was not DT feed but the zoomed-in (cropped) image from analogue CBC. It also looked like they used an analogue feed of cbc toronto or something like that, not of cbc vancouver.
The second movie segment was ok (true cbut-dt) and the picture quality of the movie was really good ('very-wide-screen').
I never noticed any promo clips for this movie on CBC in days prior to it's showing (last year tbs was very aggressively promoting it prior to the showing) and there is no info about if it's going to be rerun.
I really got very disappointed by this.

As for the CBC PDF schedule, I think it would look even better now if they would to eliminate those few repeating hours at the end of every day (time from 06.00 - 08.00 is shown twice for each day).
Also, on the new 'fall schedule', all new shows are marked with 'HD', while there is no "HD' for Rick Mercer Report. I wonder if that's a mistake or Rick is pushed back to SD.

A CFL blackout was in effect which means the Vancouver analog transmitter gets a movie instead of football. The blackout does not apply to HD. To my knowledge the TRANSMITTERS got the right feed. I was on the phone to Vancouver tech at the time.

Suggestion from the peanut gallery here (re: movies starting in the middle...).

CFL games sometimes go longer than the alloted three hours (note to VBC1, that's Canadian football, not American). Why start the movie "on-time" in the SD blackout area, while the rest of the country still has football in SD (entire country in HD)? Wouldn't it make more sense to start the movie at the end of the football game, whenever that would be. Then *all* viewers have the chance to see the whole movie, not just the blackout region SD viewers. It may require airing some filler in the blackout region, or maybe they could just join the game if it goes beyond three hours (I've definitely seen that for Eskimo games).

Just trying to come up with a way to air the full movie. Missing the start, merely because the blackout region already started, seems like an odd procedure.

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